Big Obsidian Flow Newberry
— — a mile of black glass, still sharp at the edges.
Not only on a wall.
“The Big Obsidian Flow sits inside the Newberry caldera in central Oregon. It is the youngest lava flow in the state, about 1,300 years old, and covers a square mile in heaped black glass and pumice. A short interpretive trail climbs from the parking area onto the flow itself. The edges still ring when struck. Paulina and East Lakes lie just below. from the studio
Big Obsidian Flow Newberry, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Big Obsidian Flow is a rhyolitic lava flow inside the Newberry caldera, about thirty miles south of Bend in central Oregon. It erupted roughly 1,300 years ago and is the youngest lava flow in the state. The flow covers about a square mile and contains roughly 170 million cubic yards of obsidian and pumice. It sits inside Newberry National Volcanic Monument, which is administered by the Deschutes National Forest. Newberry itself is a 1,200-square-mile shield volcano — the largest by area in the Cascades — with a five-mile-wide summit caldera that holds Paulina Lake and East Lake.
Obsidian is volcanic glass — silica-rich lava that cooled too quickly to crystallise. The flow's surface is a heaped jumble of black blocks streaked with grey pumice; under sun the broken faces flash like wet ink. The Klamath, Northern Paiute, and other tribes worked obsidian from Newberry for thousands of years and traded it across what is now the western United States. Removing rock from the monument is prohibited. The flow rests on the south rim of the caldera; the trail climbs onto its leading edge, where the blocks are still as sharp as the day they cooled.
The trailhead is at the Big Obsidian Flow parking area off Paulina Lake Road, inside Newberry National Volcanic Monument. A Northwest Forest Pass or interagency pass is required. The interpretive loop is about a mile long with roughly 150 feet of gain on stairs and packed pumice; sturdy shoes matter because the edges cut. The road into the monument generally opens by mid-May and closes with the first heavy snow. Paulina Peak, a short drive above the caldera, gives the wide view down onto the flow and the two lakes. Bring water; there is none on the flow itself.